The film describes an old couple who left their hometown surrounded by mountains and seas and went to Tokyo to visit their children. After returning, the old lady died suddenly. The children came to go to the funeral. Father-in-law, stay for a few more days before leaving, and so on. A period of life in an extremely ordinary family, there are neither conflicts nor more twists and turns, but it shows nothing more than family reunion, greetings, gossip, and rambling about the past and present of relatives, friends, and friends.
However, when Ozu showed it to the audience, the audience did not feel that it was just a boring reproduction of mundane life, but a charming art. There's nothing else mysterious about it, it's mostly an artistic reflection of life to create living characters through characterised movements and characterised language. The first is to fully shape an old couple. The old couple greeted their neighbors cheerfully before leaving, and communicated with their children and daughters-in-law after arriving in Tokyo, which showed the characters and moods of the two elderly people very vividly and appropriately. Haruko Sugimura, the famous actor who played their eldest daughter Shika, brought her to life. This is a very sophisticated, articulate but surprisingly stingy woman, but she is always so polite and thoughtful, and the more she does, the more cunning she appears. When her parents came to Tokyo, she went to visit her brother and sister-in-law's house. She left empty-handed for fear of making others laugh. She was reluctant to spend money on buying some good cakes, so she bought crackers, such as rough snacks, which were used to coax children. Old people like to eat this. When her parents came to her house, her husband bought some snacks with fillings. She thought that her parents were causing trouble for her living in her house, so she made a high-sounding excuse and sent them to Atami to let them live in a cheap hotel where they couldn't even sleep in peace, which was literally making the two old people suffer. It didn't cost much to go to Atami, but she felt that it was unfair to pay for it alone, so she cried to her brother for being poor and knocked him 3,000 yuan. Needless to say, the parents of the two should naturally add two to five for any "expenditure". She came to go to the funeral after the death of her old mother, and she did not have any regrets. What she could never forget was her mother's brocade ribbon and a piece of fine linen.
Noriko, the wife of the late second son, is a perfect image that the director deliberately created. Not only did she treat her parents-in-law warmly, but when her mother-in-law died, she came all the way to the funeral, and she left at the latest, staying in this home for as many days as possible. Father-in-law Zhou Ji said: "Compared to our own children, you are considered an outsider, but you treat us more kindly than them..." This is a very emotional statement, and it is very correct. The film was rated as the second of the ten best Japanese films of 1953.
Ozu is a defender of oriental ethics, hoping that a family will be kind and filial, but he does not maintain all the dignity of feudal parents. The film criticized the children's indifference to their old parents, and praised the kindness of the widow's daughter-in-law Noriko. However, for the old father who is over his own strength, it is not enough to get drunk himself, and he also invites old friends who are drunk to come to the house, which annoys the Zhijia family. mockery.
Because of the unique style of Ozu's work, many viewers can conclude that his work is his work even if viewed from the middle.
His style can be summed up as follows:
1. The camera is stationary. For the interior scenes, he fixed the camera on the grass mat, within a meter of the lens, because that's how high the Japanese sit on the grass mat. As for the scenery, try to make the picture symmetrical.
2. There is no need to shift and pan, but mostly use suppression.
3. Arrange the characters into similar shapes. This film depicts the scene of the death of the old lady, and the sick bed is located in the lower right corner of the screen. Her relatives are sitting in the center of the picture and lined up to the left, some facing the front, some to the right, but the mother, whose eyes are always down to the right, all lean slightly to the right, forming a similar shape. Although there are one or two people in and out of the frame, the graphic remains the same.
4. Shoot people from the front. He believes that no matter how beautiful a character's profile is, it can't be more beautiful than the front, and he doesn't want to see people's profile activities. His side shots of people are limited to moments when people are doing nothing, dazed and sluggish. Once the characters start talking or doing things, Ozu must use the camera to shoot from the front, as if listening to the other person's conversation instead of himself. When he shoots a person talking, he never takes the obedient person into the picture; conversely, he shoots the obedient person from the front, and never takes the speaking person into the picture. His principle is to absolutely avoid two or more things that attract the attention of the audience in the same picture. He also doesn't take close-ups of parts other than people's faces, such as hands and feet.
5. It is not allowed to shoot from an impolite angle. Ozu believes that the characters are the guests he invited, and it is absolutely not allowed to shoot from impolite or deliberately ugly angles. In his works, there are no characters shot from an elevation angle, nor are there any shots that exaggerate a certain part of the characters to be abnormal. Of course, this is related to the fact that there are no villains in his works at all.
6. The pace is slow. Ozu pays special attention to the stable order on the screen. Looking at each picture in isolation, a single picture is dull and boring; when viewed in conjunction, one cannot help but feel the dynamic rhythm and slowly surging ripples in the picture. The slow pace is also due to his subject matter. What he shows is only family life, the subject matter is very narrow, and there is no violent conflict. It is inevitable to adopt such a rhythm.
7. Just the right amount of humor. For example, the old father in this film, who met an old friend in a foreign land, got very drunk, and brought his drunk old friend to his daughter's house. The daughter and her husband were shocked when they were woken up by the police, who turned out to be a drunk old father who was sent to the door, which caused laughter from the audience. Before the laughter ended, father's old friend staggered in again, and the audience was even more amused. The two old people then lay down on the barber chair at the door and fell asleep. This drunken gaffe was not lost, which was quite in line with the identities and characters of these two old intellectuals.
8. Similarity and repetition of subject matter. Since family life is the only subject of Ozu's works, it is unavoidable that the content presented is similar. Even the characters have different surnames and they have the same name. There are as many as six films with the protagonist named Zhou Ji: "Autumn Light", "The Taste of Saury", "Twilight in Tokyo", "Mai Qiu", "Tokyo Story" The old fathers in the six films of "Late Spring" are all called Zhou Ji, and the two of "Tokyo Story" and "The Taste of Saury" have the same name and surname, and they are both called Hirayama Zhouji. The widow's daughter-in-law in "Tokyo Story" is called Noriko, and the unmarried daughter in "Late Spring" is also called Noriko. Someone asked him why he only made films of the same type. He joked that he was a tofu maker and could only make tofu, or at most fried tofu, but he couldn't make pork chops. In his works, there is no perfect good person, and there is no unforgivable evil person; there is no perfect good, and there is no nothing evil. In his view, if there is an absolute thing, it can only be the change of all things. The world of Ozu's works is fluid, and there is nothing constant here, so within the scope of the "family", he can turn the originally bland life episodes into humorous and moving works.
Ozu's art is purely oriental. In his works, there are no foreign-speaking, full-fledged characters, no people and things related to the West, no life scenes in luxury hotels, no plots of intrigue and robbery, and no mess. level of life. The drama stage is just home. It describes the ups and downs of the family, the family's feelings for each other, the family's unshakable grievances and grievances, the family's senseless entanglements, and the trivial bumps and bumps of the family. This "home" is the world and the world where Ozu struggled all his life, and the stage for all his works! He turned the bland "trivial" into a colorful art for people to enjoy.
Ozu's works often seem to have nothing outstanding at first, only vague meanings, but when you look at them again, you will realize that the subtle hints of the whole, extremely chewy, and the taste gradually thickens, as if it is a mouth-watering frying with a slight heat. Fragrant dishes.
From 1932 to his death in 1963, he made more than 50 works in 30 years. Shooting films with family life as the theme, in Japan, Ozu is a leading artist. He has left many masterpieces to the Japanese film industry and is praised by the world film industry. To this day, serious Western film critics often discuss his masterpiece as an example of a style.
Some people complained that his works were not important and fashionable, but he laughed it off. In 1963, he was elected as an academician of the Academy of Arts, which is unique in the Japanese film industry.
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